Far Out

Back during my college days, I spent my summers working with the U.S. Forest Service in Leadville, Colorado, a tiny place clinging to a mountainside at 10,400 feet. It was a fine old place, untouched by development. It had a grocery store, a weekly newspaper, the decrepit Tabor Grand Hotel, and a whole lot of bars.

Photo: Wayne Christeson

Best of all, Leadville wasn’t far from Aspen— just a spectacular forty-mile trip over 12,000-foot Independence Pass—and I went there often on weekends to hear the classical performances at the Aspen Summer Music Festival. It was a time when Aspen was still a funky little mountain town—before it was discovered by the glitterati—and a summer tribal gathering place for wandering hippies. The hippies would straggle through town during the day, hanging around trying to “liberate” goods from the stores, and then sleep on the town green at night wrapped in a haze of marijuana smoke. It was a magical place to be.

I would spend the night in the Forest Service guard station, hang out in the bar at the old Jerome Hotel, and browse the town’s excellent bookstore. Some weekends I spent hiking and climbing in the Maroon Bells, but mostly I went to the Music Festival under the Big Tent. I remember hearing Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg, as well as Jaime Laredo, Garrick Ohlsson, and several excellent student performers.

Photo: NASA

I happened to be at an afternoon concert under the tent on July 20, 1969, when the conductor suddenly halted the orchestra in mid-flight, turned to the audience, and shouted in a joyful voice, “I’ve just been informed that the Americans have landed on the moon!” Then he turned to the orchestra and whipped it into the Star-Spangled Banner. The audience immediately rose and sang lustily along. In the inspired din of music around me I heard glorious, soaring operatic voices, and I raised my own tenor with everything I had. At the end there was joyous cheering and laughter, and the conductor threw up his hands and said, “Let’s all take a break!”

The concert never did resume, actually, since everyone headed out to find a television. After a time I left, too, and walked over to the Jerome for a beer.

The Jerome was the oldest hotel in Aspen, practically falling down with age, and it had become little more than a flophouse for hippies and ski bums by that time. But it had a pleasant old bar inside and, best of all, no TV. I didn’t want to watch the talking-head gasbags preparing me to watch the televised moon walk planned for later that night. Instead, I leaned on the old Jerome bar and listened to the hippies complain about being hassled by the cops, while I talked to a drunken man who professed to be a silver prospector. No one seemed to be aware of the moon landing, or to care.

Photo: NASA

Later, as night moved in, I went walking through town with the vague idea of finding a bar with a TV. I wanted to watch the moon walk, but it was still early, so I just wandered. After a while, I came upon a gathering of hippies standing in a tight group on the sidewalk, staring raptly into the window of a hardware store. The store was closed, but the owner had left a big black-and-white TV playing in the window, and the hippies were riveted. As I approached, I suddenly realized I was late—the moon walk had begun!—so I edged my way into the crowd and watched as an astronaut cavorted across the screen against the pale gray surface of the moon—in the window of a hardware store, on an ordinary summer night, in Aspen, Colorado.

After a while, I stepped back from the crowd and looked up at the clear, almost-full moon passing overhead. A tall, skinny, hippie man standing nearby looked over at me and followed my gaze up into the night. After a moment, he looked back at the TV screen. Then he turned to me, his eyes wide, and whispered, “Far out!”

Copyright (c) 2017 by Wayne Christeson. All rights reserved. Chapter 16’s copyeditor, Wayne Christeson, is a Vanderbilt graduate and a retired attorney who has lived on a farm in Leiper’s Fork for twenty-seven years. His writing has appeared in Vanderbilt Magazine, Nashville Arts, the Nashville Scene, and the Lost Coast Review, among other publications. His blog is Letters From Leiper’s Fork.